It’s where his best stories arrived without fail, in the shower with warm water running down his back. Later, pencil sharp, notebook open, squeaky clean, he’d chew on the pink eraser and try to remember. The muse just laughed. That’s how he learned the best stories never make the page. (Previously published in 50-Word Stories)

My college roommate, Guy. Some rare friends pay you a visit and you pick up where you left off after all those years, all those miles, all those gains and losses, and so much, as they say, water under the bridge; each a witness and player in the separate arc of the other's life, spanning from the youth of adulthood to here and now, smiling as the years sail by ~

This Time with Feeling

It was, for a moment, amazing. 20. In love. In Europe. So young in the ruins of history the traditions of life, with no thoughts of tomorrow which now, 40 years later is today. New friends ask, how long??? No way. It's true what they say . . . like the blink of an eye. I blink now, as you sleep downstairs, if only for perspective. Two children grown and soaring, a houseboat, two cats, a night heron who greets us at the gate . . . last night I said I loved you and meant it as I always do and you returned those words, that feeling and I felt it, holding hands as we still do on this short walk, in this tiny capsule of time that is ours, this long moment we share together, so amazing.

Killer Dessert

The cheesecake looked sublime as it made its way across the kitchen floor on the backsof two ant columns. The cat watched it pass. The dog noticed too and made his movewiping out the ants and one black spider, but not before the spider bit the dog who felldead across the cat, causing a heart attack to the pensioner who’d held off dying knowingher greedy nephew was already measuring for furniture, himself 82, that old buzzard

Judge’s Comments:Have you ever considered the life cycle of greed, and how by nature it flits from one person to the next? Once you read this darkly funny piece, you will.

Guy Biederman is a SoCal expat who lives afloat on a houseboat in the San Francisco Bay where he teaches Floating Groove and Writing On The Dock of The Bay workshops. He and his wife Phyllis host Anonymous Pie Salons every New Year’s Day.